Puberty and Sexual Maturity in Male Crabs

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Results of the present study show that the level of allometry of male chelae does not change abruptly at pubertal moult and therefore immature and mature crabs cannot be distinguished on this basis. This replicats the findings of Sumpton (1990b) for Charybdis natator, in which he did not find any evidence of discontinuities in the relative growth of male chelae.
It is however well documented for portunid crabs that the level of allometry of male chelae does change suddenly at the pubertal moult in such species as Scylla serrata (Knuckey, 1996; Imtiaz et al., 1998), S. olivacea and S. paramamosain (Overton and Macintosh, 2002), Portunus pelagicus (Shields and Wood, 1993), P. sanguinolentus (Rasheed and Mustaquim, 2010), Liocarcinus depurator (Muino et al., 1999), Ovalipes stephensoni (Haefner, 1985), and Charybdis bimaculata (Doi et al., 2008) and the immature and mature crabs can be distiguished on the basis of phase allometry.
Chelae, in sexualy dimorphic crabs, are used by males in terretorial defence, combat, display and carrying female during courtship (Hartnoll, 1982). The level of allometry of male chelae is slightly higher than the females in juvenile phase and a large increase in the level of phase allometry at the pubetal moult brings the male chelae to full functional size at sexual maturity (Hartnoll. 1982). Where there is little sexual dimorphism, the role of chelae can be correlated with behaviour patterns. Hartnoll (1982) mentions the example of Goniopsis cruentata, a barchyuran crab of family Grapsidae, where dimorphism is little and both sexes play equal role in display and combat.
The chelae of Charybdis feriatus show little sexual dimorphisms and both sexes may play equal role in display and combat. Hence no ...

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...n the present study was found to vary from 1,270,399 to 3,774,114 and is higher than those reported earlier. Padayatti (1990) from Cochin, India reported 52,350 to 309,250 eggs while Rameshbabu et al. (2006) found fecundity to vary from 35,635 to 349,939. However studies involving spawning and larval rearing in captivity have shown higher number of eggs and / or zoea produced by female C. feriatus. Parado-Estepa et al (2002) from Philippines and Josileen (2011) from India have reported that a female C. feriatus can produce 1,200,000 and 1,400,000 zoea, respectively. The higher number of egg found in the present study may be attributed to the methodology. Only those females were used which had recently spawned eggs (bright orange) on their abdomen rather than crabs having eyed-stage egg (grey colour), for some eggs are lost during incubation and / or during handling.

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